'Vampire' Graves Uncovered in Poland

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Archaeologists in Poland believe they've made a startling
discovery: a group of vampire graves.

The graves were discovered during the construction of a roadway
near the Polish town of Gliwice, where archaeologists are more
accustomed to finding the remains of World War II soldiers,
according to
The Telegraph.

But instead of soldiers, the graves contained skeletons whose
heads had been severed and placed on their legs. This indicated
to the archaeologists that the bodies had been subject to a
ritualized execution designed to ensure the dead stayed dead, The
Telegraph reports. [ Famous
Fangs: Tales of Our Favorite Vampires ]

By keeping the head separated from the body, according to ancient
superstition, the "undead" wouldn't be able to rise from the
grave to terrorize the living. Decapitation was one way of
achieving that; another way was hanging the person by a rope
attached to the neck until, over time, the decaying body simply
separated from the head.

There were other, equally bizarre ways of dealing with vampire
burials, according to research published by forensic
anthropologist Matteo Borrini. He cites the case of a woman who
died during a 16th-century plague in Venice, Italy. The woman was
apparently buried with a brick wedged tightly in her open mouth,
a popular medieval method of keeping suspected vampires from
returning to feed on the blood of the living. The woman's grave
might be the earliest known vampire burial ever found.

Hers was a typical case of an accusation of vampirism following
some calamity, such as a plague or a devastating crop failure.
Accusing an individual of being a vampire was a not-uncommon way
of finding a scapegoat for an otherwise unexplained disaster.

In other cases, the body of a suspected
vampire might be staked to the ground, pinning the corpse
into place with a stake made of metal or wood. In 2012,
archaeologists in Bulgaria found two skeletons with iron rods
piercing their chests, indicating they may have been considered
vampires.

The practice of decapitating the bodies of suspected vampires
before burial was common in Slavic countries during the early
Christian era, when pagan beliefs were still widespread.

In fact, their belief in vampires stemmed from both superstition
about death and lack of knowledge about decomposition. Most
vampire stories of history tend to follow a certain pattern where
an individual or family dies of some unfortunate event or
disease; before science could explain such deaths, the people
chose to blame them on "vampires."

Villagers have also mistaken ordinary decomposition processes for
the supernatural. "For example, though laypeople might assume
that a body would decompose immediately, if the coffin is well
sealed and buried in winter, putrefaction might be delayed by
weeks or months; intestinal decomposition creates bloating which
can force blood up into the mouth, making it look like a dead
body has recently sucked blood," writes LiveScience's Bad Science
columnist Benjamin Radford. "These processes are well understood
by modern doctors and morticians, but in medieval Europe were
taken as unmistakable
signs that vampires were real and existed among them."

There's no consensus yet on when the bodies found in Poland were
buried. According to Jacek Pierzak, one of the archaeologists on
the site, the skeletons were found with no jewelry, belt buckles,
buttons or any other artifacts that might assist in providing a
burial date.